Devil in a Sunday Hat
by anthrop
Summary: As his loved ones had abandoned him to the past, so he abandoned the past to them.


_Author's Note: Cross-posted from AO3. Title from Mother Mother's "Business Man."_

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Vlad Masters spent long years in a highly specialized hospital ward, funded and strictly monitored by a private sector of the United States government known only as the GIW. It was there that he discovered and began to hone the powers given to him by the lab accident that had mutilated his face.

Not, of course, that the staff ever caught him at any of it. It had been the early days of paranormal research. Most technology, even the military-grade stuff unavailable to the public, was clunky and poorly tested. The faceless scientists who cluttered the facility with their humorous jargon and pristine white uniforms earned a hundred false positives for every true, and the most delightful thing about the agents was their knack for readily ignoring the truth even when it was staring them in the face.

All in all, the hospital ward had been the ideal place to master his budding ghost powers. If his mishaps, his "little accidents," were ever noticed, all it took from him was a doe-eyed look at the damage incurred and a benign expression of _Who, me?_ Let them think his brain had been addled by the accident; it gave him a greater freedom that he wouldn't have enjoyed otherwise.

Perhaps it helped his case that the wreckage of his face could turn even the most cast-iron of stomachs. This, unfortunately, included his own. During his stay in that windowless, high-security hospital, he forbid all things capable of casting even the foggiest of reflections from his room, and in time he developed a mild phobia of mirrors.

When they finally released him, he was cured of his ecto-acne and a master of his powers. It was then, badly scarred and nearly penniless, that he discovered two things.

The first-he learned who his true friends were, and that was precisely no one. Everyone had left him, even Jack and Maddie-his colleagues, his _best friends_. He had been forgotten, abandoned like so much trash. They had married in his absence. There hadn't even been an invitation sent to his old address. The Fentons-and _oh_ did it sting to know Maddie had taken Jack's name, had _lowered_ herself to marry that fool at all-had a child already, a daughter with her mother's hair and lovely laughter. _Already_. Hmm, perhaps he could no longer make appropriate use of that word. Time had become a mystery for him, he who had been plucked from the real world and hidden away in a reality composed of sanitized cotton and steel.

It would not remain so, if he had anything to say about that. As his loved ones had abandoned him to the past, so he abandoned the past to them. He buried himself in his studies: science, economics, business, and politics. Something about the cold-hearted mercilessness one could find in these fields appealed, and he took to them like a fish to water. The money to be made was a wonderful incentive, and of course no one could ever equal him in terms of, well, _manipulation_.

The second thing Vlad had discovered in his first years free of the government's eye was the wonderful malleability of a ghost's self-perception.

In the hospital, he had been stripped down to a social security number and a clinically-written patient file three inches thick. He had been reduced to a subject, a severe case of ecto-acne. The doctors cared more for his suppurating infection than for Vlad Masters, the young man whose life had been ended by a brilliant blast of hot green light. It made sense, then, when his face remained badly pockmarked, subtly _off_ in its movements. Delayed in a way that declared permanent damage to even the most casual eye. He walked out of that hospital cured, but doomed to ugliness.

Poor, abandoned, and desperate, he found himself trying increasingly unscientific methods to contact ghosts capable of human speech. He _ached_ for knowledge, for more of that world he had glimpsed before the Proto-Portal had catastrophically failed. Finally, he found-or to be truthful, was found by-a trio of burning vultures. They had taken one look at him and _laughed_.

He had _seethed_, then. How dare they mock him! He was far more powerful than them, than any ghost he had ever encountered!

But the vultures, still chuckling, had sat him down and shared with him the most crucial piece of knowledge he would ever hear.

_"Sure you've got juice, kid, but what you sure don't got is style."_

And they told him: ghosts didn't play by the same rules as humans. He wasn't stuck with the ravaged face Jack Fenton's bumbling had left him. And most importantly, he wasn't going to impress any ghost worth their ectoplasm if he didn't _look_ the part.

It took time, practice, and more than a few embarrassing incidents, but ultimately it all came together. The atrocity that had been his face became smooth-skinned and handsome again, the naturally exaggerated planes of his face no longer hidden by drooping, irresponsive muscle. He was able to grow facial hair again. He began to feature in magazine articles and later, magazine covers. He became the business entrepreneur everyone wanted to be. His life as Vlad Masters became everything he had dreamed of as a youth.

As for his ghost half, well, that too went through its own evolutions. Certainly he borrowed strongly from Bram Stoker, and no matter how far he pushed himself his powers never grew any redder than pink, but ghosts learned to fear him. Those that thought him worthy of scorn were always so quick to apologize after he took the time to, ah, _correct_ their misunderstanding.

The moniker of Plasmius came last.


End file.
